Pastor's Bible Study

The name "Jehovah" is God's personal name declaring that He is a person, holy, righteous, who reveals Himself and interacts with creation. He is self-existent and eternal.

Elohim is the Creator. He cares for preserves His creation. He is the Strong One who keeps His covenants.

This last chapter of Mark wraps up with Jesus' resurrection from the tomb, His commission to His church to preach the gospel to every person, and His ascension to heaven where He began His High Priestly work of interceding and advocating on the behalf of believers.

This study is a detailed account of Jesus' condemnation, scourging, mocking, and crucifixion.
Barabbas was set free, while Jesus took what was no doubt meant to be his cross. In a much greater way, Jesus took our cross. He is our substitute. We can truly say, "He died for me."

In this lesson we learn some practical lessons about how to respond to injustices in our lives. Certainly, we have an example to follow in Jesus.

Peter's faith failed in measure when he denied Jesus, but it didn't fail in whole. Satan sought to sift his faith so that he would fall away from Jesus. God allowed the sifting so that Peter would actually have his pride sifted away.

Failure isn't good, but good can come from failure. We can learn from Peter's story that when we fail we should allow our failure to drive us to repentance, turning, and conversion, and also use our failures to help strengthen others.

Judas' betrayal started as a sinful plan in his heart. His sin led him to actually betray Jesus and turn him over to the religious authorities for thirty pieces of silver.
His sinful thought led to a heinous sinful action. But after the betrayal, his remorse led him to hang himself. He served evil and in the end was consumed by evil.
This lesson focuses on Marks recounting of the betrayal of Jesus and gives four ways Judas' story can apply to us.

The Last Supper (i.e. Passover meal for Jesus) was also the first Lord's Supper. Jesus instituted this meal as a memorial, a way of remembering His sacrifice for our sin. If we fail to remember we will forget His sacrifice from a practical standpoint. The supper is extremely important.

Jesus eats two suppers with his men on back to back nights. One supper is at Simon the lepers house. The other supper is in the upper room. Between the two suppers we see individuals act in the extreme in opposite directions. At Simon's house, Mary pours out the contents of an alabaster box in worship of Jesus. It is lavish, unreserved, costly, and uninhibited. In the upper room, Jesus announces his impending betrayal by Judas. Judas has the audacity to ask, "Is it I?" He knew full well he had already conspired to betray Jesus. Within hours of this announcement, Judas would indeed betray Christ. We see the extremes of Worship and Betrayal.

In the Olivet Discourse Jesus gives an overview of the characteristics leading up to and including the tribulation period and His second coming.